State Wants Your Opinions On Highway Safety

HARRISBURG PA – If you’re licensed to drive in Pennsylvania, the state wants to know what you think about highway safety and hopes you’ll take just 5 minutes to express your opinions.

The 2017 edition of the state Department of Transportation’s Highway Safety Survey is under way online; PennDOT is interested in receiving your comments in a questionnaire posted on SurveyMonkey, here. All responses, including those in the “comments” fields, are completely anonymous, it promised.

The collected information will support PennDOT planning efforts to help reduce roadway fatalities and injuries, it added.

What was on most drivers’ minds this time last year? Texting and distracted driving, the 2016 survey showed. A “high frequency” of use for hand-held cell phones, texting, or checking email while driving was respondents’ most common complaint. The state is addressing the problem this year, it said, by “exploring new strategies to promote attentive driving practices,” as well as “distracted driving countermeasures.”

Last year’s survey also let PennDOT know that drivers thought it needed to reach more specific audiences with better communication methods. It stepped up its social media presence as a result. To address stated concerns about speeding and crashes related to it, the agency said it also decided to spend more money this year on “local speeding and aggressive driving enforcement operations.”

SurveyMonkey, the cloud-based platform being used for the survey, is not linked to and does not collect information regarding an email accounts. The only information collected about survey respondents is the information they provide in responding to survey questions.